The Jumanji Drums
by sickofdrawingcowboys
Summary: "In the Jungle you must wait until the dice read five or eight. In the jungle you must wait? What does that mean? Ahhhhh!" Alan Parish spent 26 years in the darkest jungle you can't imagine in your nightmares... Jumanji! Ever wonder what happened to him all those years? How did he survive in such a place? What was in there with him? And... Who is playing the Drum?


Chapter 1

(This is my first go at a fanfiction, chapter 2 is almost finished so I will be posting regularly until complete!)

Hanging in stillness, the leaves of the jungle slouch thick in saturated green. The dank stink that sweats out provides the impression that the humid, sticky air is fresh and easy to breathe though it is not.

Tranquil bird whistles pierce through the treetops, wandering about like playful beams of rainbow, beautiful and seemingly without beginning or end.

The subtropical climate meditates your distrust and smoothens your edges, kindly leaving you subdued and undisturbed.

The jungle is trying to seduce you. It wants nothing more than for you to comfortably quell your concentration so you may feel completely serene and discard your instincts, allowing them to condensate into warm, placid pools. Just as you feel the dulling intensity of the white hot heat screaming from the jungle, she can feel your presence too.

The density that often suffocates this endless rainforest could be its biggest threat. Even when way up high, too high to tell how high you could possibly be, Alan could jaunt across the gigantic branches that intertwined into twisted pathways connecting so many trees together. Impossible to know what is above you. Unwilling to look at what is bellow you. Anxiously stepping towards what awaits ahead of you. And too afraid to turn back at what is hunting you.

Alan was carefully hacking the giant green leaves off at the stem. Making quick work of it, he only went for the largest most rubbery plants. He had no idea what the name of the leaves were, only that they were the most waterproof and effective for sowing. This was where they grew largest, it wasn't the most dangerous part of jungle Alan had mapped, but he was sanely aware of how high up he was.

Through the erratic years he had overcome the dizzying sensation, the feeling of gravity malfunctioning in his legs and chest, the sharp inhale of warm air making it worse. Alan couldn't survive with breathing that heavily and helplessly again. When he arrived at this place there were one too many close calls, terrifyingly lucky escapes that had severed his anxieties at the nerve. Not necessarily making him stronger for it, they had just strained out the lavish, unneeded emotions in him like a sieve.

He should never have survived this long. When crouched and hiding from the darkest most dangerous creatures an imagination can suffer, Alan would be as still as the heavy leaves he cut. Closing one eye in the pitch black he would accept death as an absolute certainty. He should never have survived this long.

It was a flamboyance of flamingos early that morning that had disturbed the chaotic jungle monkeys while they were sleeping. The monkeys tended to live lawlessly, enjoying the late nights and the even later mornings. Always loud, always exploring and always trouble. There were so many of the pink birds flying overhead that morning, it had sounded like a hurricane whooshing by. The monkeys were so angry at the noise that had woken them up, they started to howl, scream and attack each other as a healthy sign of their bedlam.

Of course the monkeys and Alan both knew what this meant. It had meant that the dark center of the jungle was going to pour through the trees. It had meant the trap plants were getting hungry. It had meant a monsoon was coming before the quarter moon.

After inspecting his fence and yawning through his hands a few times, Alan knew he had work to do early on.

Puncturing two holes roughly thirty centimeters apart at the base of the leaf, Alan then untied the vine from around his neck and guided both ends through the separate holes he had created. The leaf then stacked on top of all the others and then fell onto his back like a cape once the vine was refastened. Alan had so many stacked on his back that it now provided him protection in the form of camouflage.

Having sprung through the trees so quickly, Alan had collected the leaves fast enough to insure if he were being stalked, he now had an opportunity to disappear. By spreading the giant leaves around him whilst squatting down, the leaves turned him into a plant. The big leaves would crawl up above his head, upon which he wore a hat of yet more leaves so dank that the stink would disguise his own smell. This was also convenient for when he needed the toilet.

The way back to his hut was slow and careful. The jungle was moving all around him, breathing, eating, and fleeing. Alan had learned how not to make unnatural noises, and to keep his eyes constantly looking for escape routes. But the last thing you would wish to happen in this area would be to fall. You don't fall from such a height and get to live. Besides all the freakish insects and plants would gobble you up in moments and then sit and wait for the next bit of flesh to come stumbling out of a tree.

Once when he was hunting low on the tree trunks for sap bugs, Alan had realized that a great black lion roughly the size of a horse was stalking him. While hiding within his camouflage Alan then watched in terror as a thick green vine was silently creeping under the branch the black beast was treading softly along. Within a flash the vine had wrapped itself around the lions back legs. Ripping the black beast from the tree, the lion was attacked and it's eyes were eaten out by giant centipedes whilst it was being dragged roaring into the digestive toxins of a massive yellow pod plant.

A clearing in the leaves allowed Alan to observe the entrance to his home. A makeshift ladder that was but some modest grooves in the rock that had taken him months to complete. Only the monkeys had ever clambered up into his home. Occasionally Alan would return back to see his food and water missing, and his artwork stolen or destroyed. Alan would usually sit and wait at this point to be sure there was no ambush or stalker he was meeting or leading home. Time was now a factor now though, and the sudden gush of wind that blew the back of his hair acted like a reminder to push forward and get moving. Alan scampered up the stone grooves and set about sowing in his new leaves.


End file.
